


the sicilian defense

by hdnprplflwrs



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, BAMF Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Canon Compliant, Character Death, Character Study, Clay | Dream-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Descent into Madness, Emotional Hurt, Gen, He's the bad guy, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Villain Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), but not in a good way (???), duh - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29797152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hdnprplflwrs/pseuds/hdnprplflwrs
Summary: It’s just a game, really. That’s what it boils down to.Two discs that mean too much to one person becoming a game of cat and mouse.This, he thinks, is where the war begins. This is where both sides believe that they are right in their ideas of what should happen and what they do to make it happen.There is just power.[an introspection into dream on the dsmp -- spoilers for 3/1/21 streams]
Kudos: 21





	the sicilian defense

**Author's Note:**

> let it be known that i am not a dream apologist. i apologize for no one on that godforsaken server.
> 
> except maybe ranboo. ranboo my beloved.
> 
> thanks to [Oceantail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceantail) and [thatonegorl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatonegorl): u both are absolutely gorg. icons. i stan.
> 
> [currently unlocked]

No one gets it, do they.

No one understands.

* * *

It’s just a game, really. That’s what it boils down to. 

Two discs that mean too much to one person becoming a game of cat and mouse.

Independence for those two discs, a betrayal for a crown, stacks of TNT and a gunfight (with arrows instead of bullets).

And Dream lets it happen.

This, he thinks, is where the war begins. This is where both sides believe that they are right in their ideas of what should happen and what they do to make it happen. This is where there is no more good side or bad side.

There is just power.

( _ To have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. _ )

* * *

Dream is not the villain, at least not in this part of the story.

(He doesn’t even have to lift a finger.)

It’s Wilbur’s idea to hold an election in his own country, it’s Quackity’s idea to run against them and it’s Fundy’s idea to run against his father with his father’s best friend, it’s Wilbur’s idea to let Schlatt onto the server and onto the podium, and it’s Quackity’s play to pool his votes with Schlatt.

(Is he any more of a villain than they are?)

Schlatt plays his part perfectly, of a man who shouldn’t have become president but somehow  _ did _ and was both too proud and too much of a coward to be a good one. Lines blur. Alliances shift. Friendships are broken and new ones created, new people join the fray, and Pogtopia becomes a legitimate force within the SMP as contenders for power.

Dream stays out of this conflict, because he doesn’t need to be there. He has leverage over the most untameable person on the server, and that’s really all he needs right now.

L’manberg, Pogtopia, Schlatt, Wilbur, Quackity, Tommy–– they’ve all become the villains and the heroes of their own stories, and they take over the history books for now. They write their own sins, immortalize them in the paths beneath their feet, in the smoke that hangs in the air.

Dream isn’t the villain of the story. Dream gives Wilbur TNT, yes, but he’s not the villain. Dream takes Eret’s crown on Karl’s information and gives it to George, yes, but for the good of the Dream SMP faction and not in his own interests. Dream gives the surrender of Manberg and Schlatt’s last location, and plays the pawn.

Dream’s simply an enabler. A means to an end, if you will. Ask and ye shall receive.

(There’s no point in stirring the pot when there’s too many cooks in the kitchen already.)

Techno calls Tommy  _ Theseus _ , and maybe he’s right. A brother slain by an angel of death, a hole where his dream first came into fruition, and his blood equal raising two of the worst creatures to exist on the server in his face, all in one day.

To be fair, if you frame it correctly, this could be a tragedy. To be fair, Tommy could be the hero in this story. To be fair, Wilbur could be the villain, or Schlatt could be, but it’s not Dream.

Dream simply watches the confessions this time around.

The tyrannical dictator is both forgotten and enshrined, a book heavy in his hand to bring the dead back.

(Along the way, Sapnap kills pets. Really, this should’ve been to no one’s surprise, considering Sapnap’s propensity to fight like an animal while cornered, collateral damage be damned.)

* * *

There’s more people joining the server. More lives to take into account. More people to bully into place.

Well. Not bully.

Very,  _ very _ persuasively nudge.

With the enchanted Netherite axe on his belt glinting wickedly in the light and his crossbow strapped to his back, a quiver full of arrows at the ready, of course.

The discs are the king and queen of his chess set, the highest risk and the highest reward. They trade between him and Tommy, him and Tommy and a few others, and occasionally Dream thinks that he’s becoming more and more like the villain Tommy keeps saying he is.

Dream fights to keep fighting, because there is no use delaying the inevitable. Dream kills to incite killing, because there is no use in being some form of immortal if everyone else is as well. Dream nudges and pushes and persuades and convinces and states as fact, because ideas succumb to their own machinations in the end whereas words are as forever as the memories that hold them.

Tommy remains the most untameable, the most unpredictable, the most  _ human _ . He believes in his friends, in his family, in himself; he believes that he can fix the burns his brother laid on the ground and the hurt in his best friend’s eyes and the fog of depression over the server that Tommy blames Dream for.

Dream hasn’t been the villain, but he becomes once when the only earth-shattering conflict now on the server is between him and Tommy over circles of strange material that matter too much for no good reason.

Tommy writes Dream in the history books as the villain, bestowing sin upon him, and Dream wears his crown of thorns and hoists the mantle onto his shoulders.

Tommy is exiled, and Dream plays with his puppet strings because Tommy proclaims him the antagonist to Tommy’s protagonist.

Tommy believes too much in the material and Dream exploits that, showing him how truly inane such attachment is. Tommy believes too much in his friends and Dream exploits that when no one shows up to Tommy’s party in Logstedshire and Dream cuts the last few threads binding him to the last people Dream himself had attachments to.

(Technoblade becomes a villain too, in the hands of his brother’s best friend’s misguided hands, and he catches the brunt of an anvil execution with a totem. Dream’s his enabler too, giving him armor and potions to beat Quackity and get out for a favor. He’s also most definitely hiding Tommy in his arctic cabin, but that doesn’t really matter as much as Dream pretends it does.)

Tommy believes too much in the shadow of his brother, and Dream exploits that by blowing it up.

The Community House is blown up, and Dream blames Tommy. No one believes him, of course, because Tommy’s supposed to be in exile. Then Tommy lands in their midst, and everyone believes him.

Even with Technoblade backing him, Tommy folds.

The king and queen are reunited once more, and Dream gives them a day before he chunk errors New L’Manberg.

(He needs more though, and he uses the chaos to gain certain items before it’s all gone.)

(Come on now, you think he’s had enough?)

* * *

Dream is the perfect villain, and he has played his role well.

He is as hated as JSchlatt, if not more.

He is as anarchical as Technoblade can be, if not _significantly_ more.

He is as manipulative as Wilbur Soot, if not better and more dastardly.

Dream holds his cards close to his chest, and never reveals them.

Aces up his sleeves he hasn’t played yet: a favor, a forgetful enderian, a book that holds more power than two discs ever did.

To be fair, there will be time where he puts them into play.

Now is not that time.

Now is the time for the hero to win, and so they shall.

As infallible as he’d like to believe he is, Dream is still not immune to making mistakes. To human unpredictability in general. To overconfidence.

Dream gives up when he recognizes the battle is lost, when everyone is spread out before him in full Netherite and ready to final kill him and run the server into the ground, Tommy with Dream’s sword already dripping with blood from Dream’s first life and Tubbo being comforted by Puffy and Sapnap. He gives up when Tommy gives his speech, denouncing everything that Dream has done and showing them the hall full of their prized possessions, telling them about his thirst for total control over the server. 

He allows Sapnap, Punz, Bad and Sam to take him to Pandora’s Box. They leave at the entrance, where Sam muscles him through all the security measures and into the obsidian box that is the maximum security holding cell.

They don’t say anything to him. He doesn’t say anything, either.

The lava falls behind Sam as Dream props his elbows on the netherite blocks that bar him from the lava curtain.

Dream laughs, long and loud and full of mirth.

* * *

To Tommy, it’s like the roles were reversed from exile.

To Bad, it’s like he’s become a shell of himself.

To Sapnap, it’s like he’s raring to escape from his prison.

In reality?

Dream meditates.

Yes, he tosses the clock in the lava a few times and yes, he tries to light a portal with the lectern. If anything, that’s just to get on Sam’s nerves.

He sends Ranboo a message through Sapnap. That’s really all he’s done in prison. 

(Ranboo’s been a very valuable asset so far.)

Living in prison is like a forced mental health break, with nothing to do but write books and eat potatoes.

He could write a hit list for once he’s out of prison. He could write down everything he knows about the prison and try to find a loophole. He could write a biography, so that the future could dictate if the victor writes history or not.

Dream meditates in prison, and waits for opportunity to present itself.

Come on, now.

He’s got time enough.

* * *

Why does Dream insist on this much violence and destruction, if it only tears his beautiful server apart?

Why does Dream insist on bringing pain to his mother’s eyes, his best friend’s eyes, his lover’s eyes? To foe and ally alike?

Why does Dream insist on bending his world to show what people want, regardless of the consequences?

Is he evil for doing so? Is he good for doing so? Everyone has a different definition of each. Perhaps Dream is both the hero and the villain. Good and bad. It doesn’t really matter anymore.

It started as self-defense. When Tommy first killed him and the discs were stolen in retaliation. Then it became a show of power. Who could top the other until there was barely anything left to fight for.

Power became annihilation, in the three deaths of L’manberg.

Power became madness, in Wilbur, in Schlatt, in Niki––

Power came in delivering the three disgraceful deaths of Theseus, one in betrayal, one in failure, and the last in––

The last death is in a heap on the floor of the obsidian prison, sanity deteriorated to almost nothing within the span of a week.

Dream wipes his knuckles on his jeans slowly, arm throbbing where Tommy had socked him on the shoulder.

He wrinkles his nose at the blood seeping into the unforgiving black obsidian and the rather floppy mass that is human flesh and debates whether or not he should throw the body into the lava.

Eh. Sam’ll probably clean it up.

* * *

It could be for anyone.

It could be in order to be understood.

Power always comes with a price.

**Author's Note:**

> Find all of my socials + links for various crisis in the world [here](https://hdnprplflwrs.carrd.co/). According to Ao3 statistics, only a very small percentage of people actually leave comments on fics. So if you enjoyed this fic, please consider commenting, it's free and easy and a great way to show the author their work is appreciated. :-)
> 
> PLEASE STAY SAFE AND WEAR A MASK!!!!


End file.
